Using Data to Turn the Tide on Course Reviews

Description

"Just sit right back and you’ll hear our tale, a tale of course reviews 
That started with the rubric and overcoming the “not met” blues. 
When the feedback started getting rough, instructors were growing weary 
So the design team found the standards causing the most misery." 

The crew of Gilligan's Island may have experienced rough water, but we’re smooth sailing. Come hear about an internal peer-review course-certification process, discuss QM standards continuously marked “not met” among review teams, and share methods for remedying the “not met blues” for both review teams and faculty. 

After coordinating over 70 internal peer-reviews of electronic courses based on the Quality Matters standards, we realized that a number of standards were consistently marked as “not met” by the review teams. This presentation will share how our pattern of “not met” standards altered our approach to instructional design, training, and peer review. 

In order to better understand our internal peer-review results, we began by first reviewing all “review summary” documents for every course that had been internally peer-reviewed and documenting the frequency of which a standard was marked “not met” by the review team as a whole. Our results revealed that 21 standards were not met in at least 20% of the course reviews. Of these 21 most frequently “not met” standards, eight were “essential (3-point)” standards. 

From our analysis, we discovered that more than half (57%) of the 21 most frequently “not met” standards were from General Standards 1, 7, or 8. Interestingly, there are no alignment standards in General Standards 1, 7, or 8, which may indicate that faculty are spending significantly more time focusing on General Standards 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 in order for their course to be aligned. 

With this data, we are able to modify our faculty training, focusing on the standards of concern. We are also able to better prepare our review team members by hosting a peer-reviewer training to discuss the most frequently not met standards, how to review them, and tips for meeting this standard.

Presenter First Name:
Alise
Presenter Last Name:
Hagan
Presenter Email:
asc2995@louisiana.edu